Ice Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked you to come out.”
    Jackie just stood there watching me, shaking his head.
    “Alex, I’m fine,” she said. “Really. I’ll just go downstairs and get something to eat. Watch the snow for a while. If you think you might be able to get here tomorrow—”
    “Yes,” I said. “I’ll be there tomorrow.”
    Jackie looked at the ceiling and sighed dramatically. I looked around for something to throw at him.
    “Okay, then,” she said. “I’ll stay here tonight and I’ll see you tomorrow. Call me in the morning, eh?”
    “I’ll do that,” I said. Then there was a long silence while I tried to think of something else to say.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said. We both said goodbye and hung up.
    “A woman,” Jackie said.
    “I’m going to kill you.”
    “A woman. This is why you’ve been acting so weird lately.”
    “Yeah, and this is why I didn’t mention it before, Jackie. I know how you are about women.”
    I didn’t want to have the whole discussion again with Jackie, the man who lived through the worst divorce of the twentieth century. But it was coming whether I wanted it or not, so I just asked him for a beer and went over to the fireplace. As long as I’d be staying put in Paradise, I knew I should be back out there plowing my road. But a little break wouldn’t hurt.
    So that’s where I was when the sun went down that evening. I was sitting by the fire in the Glasgow Inn, my usual spot, but on this day not at all where I wanted to be. The wind kept blowing and the snow was still coming hard, like it would never end.
    This is why the Ojibwas prayed to the winter every year, asking for mercy, asking that the spring would come quickly, and that the old man and the young child would both live to see it.
    The snow finally stopped around midnight. But the damage had already been done. I didn’t even know it yet. As I slept alone in my bed, I didn’t even know what I had done.
    Everything that was about to happen would begin that night. And it would all be on my head.

Chapter Three
    The time passed between the two of us, leading up to this night at the Ojibway Hotel. I had been going over there three or four times a week, for how long was it then? A month? Five weeks? You add up the actual waking hours we spent together, and it wasn’t that much. But she was always there in my head. If I wasn’t on my way over there or on my way back, I was thinking about what she was doing, and when I’d be seeing her again.
    And me, I was virtually the only person she saw, the only person she ever talked to. She’d go down into Blind River, pick up some things, go right back home, work on the house. That’s all she did. She said it helped her forget everything that had happened. She had to put it all behind her before she could think about what to do next. That’s what she told me.
    It made me wonder. Was I just a part of that? Another way to forget?
    It got strange sometimes. She’d be doing something and she’d look up at me, like I had just shown up and she had no idea what I was doing there. I wouldn’t hear from her for three or four days. Then she’d call me up and ask me how soon I could be there. She was hungry and she wanted to eat dinner with me right away.
    Then we’d go upstairs. It was always the same room. The same bed or floor or a little of both. The last couple of times, we’d lain there and she’d be looking off at nothing, like she was a million miles away. She’d snap out of it and give me a quick smile, and then without a word she’d get up and go downstairs.
    It wasn’t real. That’s what I finally started to realize. The whole thing was like a spell, or a daydream, or something you’d make up on a lonely night. Wouldn’t it be nice if there were someone, right here, right now …
    I’ve never left well enough alone, not once in my entire life, so I decided it was time to put this thing to the test, to get it out in the daylight and to see what happened. So I asked